The Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center (ACNC) is celebrating three decades of discoveries that have helped children around the world grow up healthier and stronger.
ACNC was established in 1994 through congressional appropriation of USDA funding and today has a portfolio of large-scale studies exploring how maternal diet, physical activity, and early feeding practices influence a child’s growth and development.
The center is part of the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute (ACRI) and is a partnership with the USDA-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS). ACNC is one of six National Human Nutrition Centers funded by the USDA-ARS, and one of just two focused on pediatric and maternal nutrition and metabolic health in the United States.
“The Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center plays a critical role in defining and delivering unprecedented care for children,” said Pete Mourani, MD, senior vice president and chief research officer of Arkansas Children’s, president of ACRI, and a professor of Pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). “We are a full-service research center that propels discovery science while simultaneously implementing evidence-based practices to understand how those elements work in real-life environments.”
ACNC opened as the only such center not housed on federal property and offering a six-bed live-in facility, multi-subject/day outpatient building, including clinical nutrition laboratory, human brain function laboratory, recruiting center, and psychological evaluation unit.
Over the last 30 years, USDA-ARS has invested more than $170 million in funding for Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center. The National Institutes of Health has supported multiple ACNC projects as well. The translational research approach ACNC has taken over the past 30 years has enhanced understanding of the impact of feeding infants’ human milk or various infant formulas on cognition, growth, and development.
“ACNC’s research is truly translational,” Mourani said. “That means our scientists oversee studies within traditional scientific labs, as well as clinical studies and trials among children and mothers to examine how nutrition and physical activity impact growth and development. We are also proud to host community-based studies that take the best evidence we know from the lab and the clinic to real-world settings where families live, learn and play.”
To learn more about the studies in which ACNC is currently enrolling, visit archildrens.org/acnc